16. Geocaching adventures

We spent a very pleasant morning with our friend Alastair (aka Mimring) in the Santa Cruz Mountains, looking for—and finding, yay!—nineteen caches along the Fall Creek Trail up near Bonny Doon. Here are a few photos:

A Tribute to Hunger Games (GC43HZ0):
a thoroughly rusted shut ammo can with a dainty little bison tube
("the container") attached to the handle: excellent refurbishment!

The Bonny Doon Biggie (GCATVQV):
the biggest ammo can I've seen in quite some time,
and the satisfying reward of a puzzle cache

We originally thought the "biggie" referred to this big
burnt stump: here David and Alastair consult their oracles

A beautiful face in the redwoods

The trail

It's always excellent to catch up with Alastair, an economist who until Trump came along worked in international aid & development. Lately, he's been fixing up houses (his and his wife's, the house nextdoor, and his mother's house in the UK), getting at least one or two of them ready to rent—for a little necessary income. But come a week from Friday, he's going to hit the road for two-plus months, his goal: to find the oldest geocache in each of the lower 48 states (save California, which he found in January). 

Here is a list, with links to the cache pages, which go back to 2000 and 2001—25 years of geographically oriented fun. 

The oldest still-active cache in the US and in the world is GC30 Mingo, in Kansas, created on May 11, 2000—the seventh cache ever placed. (In those days, caches tended to be published rather haphazardly, and by region, so the first hundred or so aren't sequentially numbered.) 

The very first geocache was stashed a week earlier, on May 3, 2000, by Dave Ulmer near Beavercreek Oregon. Here's what AI and Atlas Obscura tell me about that event:

Ulmer, a computer consultant, hid a 5-gallon bucket containing various items, including Delorme Topo USA software, in a forest near Portland to test the accuracy of GPS. He shared the coordinates with an online group, and two people, Mike Teague and another individual, were among the first to find it. This act of hiding and then sharing the location of a container, along with the chance to take something and leave something else, marked the beginning of geocaching. 

Here's a more detailed look at the story:

Motivation:

Dave Ulmer, a computer consultant, wanted to test the accuracy of GPS technology, which had just become more precise after the removal of Selective Availability by the US government. 

The "Stash":

He placed two CD-ROMs, a book by Ross Perot, a VHS of the movie George of the Jungle, four dollars cash, a slingshot handle, a cassette tape recorder, some topographic software, and a can of black-eyed beans in a bucket, left it in the woods, and sent its coordinates (N 45° 17.460 W 122° 24.800) to sci.geo.satellite-nav. There was also a logbook with instructions: “The Rule Is: Take Something Leave Something.”

 

First Finds:

Within three days, two people, Mike Teague and another individual, successfully found the bucket using GPS. 

Spreading the Word:

The experience was shared online, and the idea of hiding and finding stashes quickly spread, leading to the creation of a mailing list called "GPS Stash Hunt" and the term "geocaching," coined by Matt Stum. 

Legacy:

The original geocache, no longer in place, is honored with a plaque in Beavercreek, and the can of beans that was part of the original stash is now a trackable item. 

You can read more about the history of geocaching here. 

Today there are 3.3 million active geocaches (I've found 5,554, since 2007—I've got a ways to go), in 191 countries. As a sport, it is most popular in Germany, then the US, the Netherlands, France, and Czechia. David and/or I have found caches on six continents (we lack Australia—it's on our list for next year—though if you count Oceania as a "continent," we've got all of them accounted for, yes, even Antarctica). We enjoy the pastime greatly.

Though I'm not sure we're quite as crazy as Alastair, with this mad adventure he's embarking on. That said, I'm very much looking forward to following him as he posts each state's find on Instagram—something I have commanded him to do, and will nag him about if I see him flagging. This is epic! Crazy, but definitely epic!  

I hope he has a wonderful time, and finds every last one. Some of them, he says, look really hard. But what's a hobby without a challenge?